


The Many-Worlds of Amelia Pond

by snowdarkred



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Mindfuck, Quantum Mechanics, Violence, Year That Never Was
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-29
Updated: 2011-12-29
Packaged: 2017-10-28 10:42:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/307027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snowdarkred/pseuds/snowdarkred
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s only so much about Amelia Pond that can be explained by a tear in time and space.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Many-Worlds of Amelia Pond

**Author's Note:**

> The [Many-Worlds Interpretation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation) is one of my pet quantum theories: "Everett's Many-Worlds interpretation has implications beyond the quantum level. If an action has more than one possible outcome, then -- if Everett's theory is correct -- the universe splits when that action is taken. This holds true even when a person chooses not to take an action." [[x](http://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/everyday-myths/parallel-universe2.htm)]

_I remember it twice, different ways._

Amy Pond, “The Wedding of River Song”

 

_I wish I could tell you that you'll be loved. That you'll be safe and cared for and protected. But this isn't the time for lies._

Amy Pond, “A Good Man Goes to War”

 

_Amelia Pond hasn't lived here in a long time._

Amy Pond, “The Eleventh Hour”

 

_How can I remember them if they never existed?_

Amy Pond, “The Big Bang”

 

_It's you. It's all about you. Everything. It's about you._

The Doctor, “Flesh and Stone”

 

 

Amy Pond’s life never made sense. Even the Doctor, for all his genius and age and wisdom, never quite figured her out.

  
\---

  
When she closes her eyes, she can feel the earth turn. It’s a slow glide, a wobbly movement that leaves her seasick if she concentrates really hard. She only feels it when she’s absolutely alone, when there are no distractions or noisy kids or cars or nosy adults. She tries to explain it to her second therapist, but the woman looks at her with blank suspicious eyes and scribbles down a note:  _Still lives too much in her own head._

Amelia Pond never has a therapist. Amy Pond has four. Lia Pond has seven, and then they lock her up because she keeps talking to people who aren’t there.

  
\---

  
Amelia draws trees. She draws them from the roots up, making them wind and wind and wind together, knot into patterns and words. Her art teacher praises her and shows the pictures to the rest of the class, pointing out the shading and the fine details that Amelia doesn’t remember adding.

(Her mother puts them on the fridge; her aunt puts them in the living room and then forgets about them.)

Amelia likes trees. She can almost feel their life pulse under her fingers when she touches them, can feel the sap flowing beneath the bark. She likes fruit trees best. There’s something about being able to reach up and pull down a snack that fills her with childlike delight, no matter how old she gets. She supposes it all goes back to when her mother used to carve faces into her apples in order to coax her into eating them.

There’s a strange crack in the tree in the garden. It looks like a grotesque smile, a taunt. She’s drawn to it and repulsed by it, all at once. When she places her hand against the bark, she feels nothing.

  
\---

  
Amy Pond’s aunt cuts down the tree after the shed gets wrecked.

“We’ll do a bit of gardening, yeah?” she says as the two of them watch the workers  _chop-chop-chop_ away. “Get this placed cleaned up. Maybe you could have friends over.”

Amy stays silent as the tree groans one last time and falls, leaving a crack that isn’t there hanging where the trunk used to be. She can’t see it, can’t feel it, doesn’t even really know it’s there, but there’s a cold breeze on her face which carries scents that never quite taste right.

  
\---

  
She doesn’t forget things the way she should. There are gaps in her memory, whole days or weeks that vanish overnight. Instead she remembers trips she never took, classes she skipped, car accidents she never had. She remembers taking French instead of German.  _(Le Docteur)_ German instead of French.  _(Der Doktor)_ She remembers taking Spanish.  _(El Doctor)_

She remembers taking Latin.  _(Doctor)_

Some things are blurry and out of focus; they play in faded black and white, the color drained away. Some things are so sharp that remembering them is like living them all over again: She can feel an apple in her hand, she can taste the sweetness of a soft drink on her tongue, she can hear the world turning.

She has a favorite shade of blue that she’s never been able to find. It was on a blue police box she saw as a child.

She remembers a birthday party and a funeral, both existing on the same day. Hers, both.

  
\---

  
She grows up knowing too much but never quite there. Her parents tut over her, tell her to keep her head out of the clouds. Give that Rory boy a chance to sweep her off her feet or at least have a good go at it.

Her aunt leaves on a business trip and doesn’t come back for two weeks. She yells at Amy for rearranging the furniture while she was gone.

Amy doesn’t tell her that the furniture has always been exactly where it is. It’s the pictures on the wall that have changed.

  
\---

  
_taptaptaptap_

There’s a pounding in Amy’s head.

_taptaptaptap_

It’s in everything. In the beat of the new music singles to the flickering of an old light-bulb.

_taptaptaptap_

It makes reality swirl around the edges, like watercolors blending over each other in a painting. Everything gets a bit vaguer in the middle. Sentences lose direction, thoughts disconnect, emotions rise and fall in unnatural tides. It presses against her, drowning her in its endless rhythm.

_taptaptaptap_

There’s a man who shouldn’t exist taking over conversation, invading the telly. He hurts to look at, and so Amy, who has never had a particular interest in politics anyway, begins to avoid all mention of it. He doesn’t sit right in her thoughts. He’s a YouTube video with the sound on a split second delay.

He's  _wrong_ .

_taptaptaptap_

And then--

_taptaptaptap_

And then there’s a year that lasts a day.

_taptaptaptap_

Amy feels time overlap itself. Two realities unfold in front of her, one in which the hours drags on and on and another where weeks fly by in a blaze of anger and despair. She feels time twist and fold and bend and break and heal and break and die and burn and heal and twist--

The world burns under a madman’s gleeful gaze, and Amy can feel the heat of his insanity, lapping at the edges of her consciousness.

_taptaptaptap_

He feels her too.

_taptaptaptap_

She runs, dragging Rory behind her.

_taptaptaptap_

He finds her. He kills him.

_taptaptaptap_

He takes her apart. She’s watching the news with her aunt as he cuts her hair off, lock by lock. Rory comes over, and he slices open her leg to see what her bones look like. She flees to her bedroom, using her headache as an excuse, and as she closes the door behind her, he rips open her chest, just to make sure she only has one heart.

He pries open her brain, but there’s a crack there too, waiting for him. He forgets her because he doesn’t remember in the future. They all forget her. Time, repairing itself. Healing before breaking and then breaking again. Looping back on itself.

_taptaptaptap_

Reality and time stretch and stretch and stretch, and when they snap back in place, to where they were supposed to be, it falls over her like a thick velvet curtain. She welcomes the darkness and lets it cool her thoughts.

  
\---

  
When she wakes up the next day, the memories are faded, washed out like the rest of her life -- lives. She pauses in her morning routine and runs her hand over the familiar crack in her wall. She looks outside her window. She sees a tree and a gap. She sees a hellish landscape torn apart by genocide and bloodshed. She sees her backyard.

(She sees it all at once, all overlapping and interweaving and interchanging, and the only reason she doesn’t go mad is because it’s always been like this. Always been a mad clash of worlds, of white noise and double-sight. Amy has four therapists, and Lia is locked away forever, because she has a best friend named Mels and another named Rory and neither of them can be seen by anyone else.)

She goes downstairs for breakfast. Her aunt is gone. There’s no trace of her in the house, no hint that she had ever existed except for Amy’s memories of her. The metaphorical rug has been pulled out from under her yet again.

“Bugger,” Amy says to herself, and then she calls Rory to make sure he still exists.

  
\---

  
When her Doctor comes back, she takes the cricket bat Mels left in the spare room and whacks him over the head with it. Then she puts on her police uniform and calls in backup.

(Then she puts on her police costume and pretends to call for backup.   
     Then she stands there waiting, cricket bat in hand, because she doesn’t have a uniform to put on.   
          Then she makes a cup of tea because no one broke into her house at all.)

  
\---

  
Amy’s dreams rewrite the universe. Amy cries when Rory never exists to lose. Amy survives and dies on a hostile alien world that tries to kill her with kindness. Amy has a best friend who is and isn’t her daughter. Amy gives birth to a baby that’s more Time Lord than human. Amy marries a plastic Roman who isn’t plastic or Roman. Amy’s dreams rewrite the universe, much of which she hasn’t seen. She’s seen all of it. She puts everything in its proper place, even if it wasn't there before.

“Okay, kid,” she tells herself, “this is where it gets complicated.”

  
\---

  
There’s only so much about Amelia Pond that can be explained by a tear in time and space.


End file.
